Azulon says that the sages foretold that if the descendent of an avatar married into the royal bloodline, they would spawn a line of very powerful rulers (or something along those lines).

Why would Azulon want Ursa to marry Ozai? At the time, Iroh was in line to be firelord. Ozai's children were not supposed to ever be rulers of the fire nation, at least not according to Azulon's plan. He would have wanted her to marry Iroh or even Lu Ten (idk how old he was) . Perhaps Iroh was already married or whatever but, did Azulon really think "Hey, if something happens to Iroh THEN the firenation will be ruled by this powerful line"? I don't think so, he seamed to favor Iroh over Ozai. He was outraged when ozai proposed he be firelord.

This whole plot point is so poorly thought out and it shows why 1. the original writers should write everything and 2. All stories should have a "writer" who acts as an observer who proof checks and tweaks things. Zuko being the descendent of Sozin and Roku should have been more of a "it just happened" thing. That would have made more sense than this poorly thought out backstory.

The more I think about it, the more I think my personal cannon is just the original series. No comics, no LOK.

"Perhaps Iroh was already married or whatever but, did Azulon really think "Hey, if something happens to Iroh THEN the firenation will be ruled by this powerful line"?"

Probably. The prediction was that this would ensure that his family reigned for a long time. It was about the long term, & in the long term, something is probably going to happen to the main monarch, & a more distant relative will have to become Fire Lord. Marrying Ursa off to Iroh because Iroh was next in line would be very short term thinking, not to mention that there is no reason why Azulon should have forced Iroh to disown his wife & son--as would be necessary to create a new legitimate heir--when Ozai is right there. He didn't hate Ozai, or anything.

"This whole plot point is so poorly thought out"

It actually makes a lot of sense. I have no idea why you are assuming that Azulon would plan for a direct, efficient transfer of power directly from himself to Iroh & so on. By your logic, the fact that Ozai even exists is a poorly thought out plot point, because he's a potential rival for the throne, & Azulon should not want that.

"1. the original writers should write everything"

You are assuming that this wasn't an idea that they either wrote themselves or personally reviewed & endorsed, which is contradictory to their actual statements.

"2. All stories should have a "writer" who acts as an observer who proof checks and tweaks things."

That's called an editor, & they do.

"The more I think about it, the more I think my personal cannon is just the original series. No comics, no LOK."

Yeah, like the original canon is any better about these things. For example, if Azulon is so empathetic about losing a relative, then why would he want his grandson killed?

"I have no idea why you are assuming that Azulon would plan for a direct, efficient transfer of power directly from himself to Iroh & so on."

Uh, I think him getting pissed at Ozai when Ozai suggested otherwise is a good indicator of this.

"By your logic, the fact that Ozai even exists is a poorly thought out plot point, because he's a potential rival for the throne, & Azulon should not want that."

Um...why? Azulon can want to have more than one kid but, only want his first born to be fire lord.

"& in the long term, something is probably going to happen to the main monarch, & a more distant relative will have to become Fire Lord".

the longer the term the farther away ozai's descendents will be. iroh's descendents in 500 years would be very distantly related to ozai's descendents. giving the position over to your 12th cousin would be ridiculous.

"Yeah, like the original canon is any better about these things. For example, if Azulon is so empathetic about losing a relative, then why would he want his grandson killed?"

he seemed to like Iroh significantly better than Ozai. and also didn't seem to care much for zuko (or even azula). so he didn't care.
he also wasn't the most moral man, and maybe "teaching ozai a lesson" was more important to him than sparing his own grandson.

Okay, I'm seriously wondering if you understand how a royal family system works. Here is the breakdown:

1. You have your monarch. This would be Azulon. He is married to a woman of similar status, to keep power within the ruling class.

2. He has children so that his family can continue his line. Multiple children are preferred, in case someone dies or is sterile. They must be legitimate, & historically male, but Avatar waives the latter requirement.

3. The order of succession is determined by birth order, unless the monarch specifically hand-picks a different successor. The throne is Iroh's by right because he's OLDER, not because Azulon hates Ozai. If Iroh died without children & Ozai was too old to be Fire Lord, then the title WOULD be passed to Ozai's children.

4. The next-in-line is appointed, & the cycle begins anew.

As for sacrificing Zuko, the point was that you're willing to overlook his contradictory behavior in another instance--actually, behavior that is ACTUALLY contradictory.

okay but, iroh's line DID end when lu ten died. but, azulon still wanted iroh to be firelord. he obviously planned for iroh to be firelord.

let's say lu ten didn't die. and he eventually became firelord. lets say lu tu ten had multiple children, who also had children. if anyone of lu ten's children or grandchildren died. then it would be passed to another one (who is also not of avatar descent).
what I am saying is the likelihood of ozai's descendents becoming fire lord would become less and less likely as time continued. the only opportunity for that to happen would have been iroh or lu ten dieing. after that its pretty much guaranteed that ozai's descendents wouldn't be firelord.
so azulon is making a very big "if" about something that he seems to want to really happen.
like I said, if iroh was already married. he could have married her to lu ten.

I thought that if I sat & thought about it, I would come to a reason why Lu Ten would be a bad choice.

Ursa can't churn out babies forever. Lu Ten died while he was still a young man, which means that he must have been a very young child during "The Search." If Azulon waited to marry Ursa off until Lu Ten reached sexual maturity, then she may have hit menopause before she yielded enough viable offspring.

Because Azulon did not wait, Ozai already had 2 heirs by the time Lu Ten died & Ursa, while older, could probably still produce a few more children. Which apparently meant that Azulon thought that Ozai could spare a son.

The take home message is that producing a royal lineage is not an exact science, but a series of risk-based decisions.

well lu ten had to be in his 20s by the time he died. and I guess we don't know how old ursa is/was (do we?). but, based on looks I'd say she couldn't have been older than 35, probably younger. and people seemed to get married young (like 16). I'd say there would be a big enough window for ursa and lu ten to have had kids.

and we never here anything of iroh's wife, or if he even got married. it is entirely possible she was gone by the time azulon heard the prophecy or whatever.

I'm just saying, it makes ALOT more sense for azulon to have iroh or lu ten marry ursa, than ozai.

The Wiki says that she is 40-41 in The Search. At the same time, Zuko was 18-19. So, when she was getting married, she was indeed in her 20's. Using a similar method, Iroh was in his 50's. So even if his wife was not around, then it wouldn't make sense to marry her off to him, as men become less likely to produce healthy children with age. Zuko was 11 when Lu Ten died, which means that if Lu Ten was in his 20's when he died, then he would have been anywhere from 9-17 when Ursa was getting married. So that could still be 7 years until he's mature. Again, Ozai is right there, being a perfectly eligible bachelor. This is also not accounting for the several things that we don't know, like if Azulon had originally proposed the idea to Iroh or Lu Ten but gave them a choice,

the search part 3 says that ursa was 21 when she was married to ozai: ikem said she broke his heart when they were 21.

i haven't been following this thread too closely, but the idea of having ursa married to lu ten just seems absurd to me.

also, at that time, i highly doubt iroh was already in his 50s... we unfortunately don't know the age difference between ozai and iroh, but there's no way it was 30 years. even if ozai was 30 when he married ursa, that's still a 20 year gap between him and iroh, which also seems a little absurd.

we do have a little picture of zuko, iroh, and lu ten somewhere, from one of zuko's brief flashbacks... in the episode "the beach", i think? if anyone could find it, that would be great.

Neo Bahamut makes some good points, and Ursa marrying with Ozai because of the prophecy isn't a weird thing in itself. What's remarkable, though, is how it seems to be implied that Ozai was the obvious and only choice to pair her with. Was he really the only Fire Nation royal available for marriage at the time of the prediction? Or did the sages only bother to inform Azulon of this prediction once he went looking around for a wife for his second son?

so, even he was 7 when she was 21. then by the time he is 16, she would be 29. I know that isn't socially acceptable in our society but, it is perfectly fine for making kids. and we have seen couples on avatar that have been over a decade apart. heck sozin had to have been at least 40 years older than azulons' mother. knowing that, azulon probably wouldn't care about matching up his descendants with someone who is significantly different in age. and iroh's age would have nothing to do with it, a healthy man can make kids fine all through his life. especially in his 50s. some of my relatives had kids in their 50s. and sozin was like 82.

now I understand ozai was there and available but, if azulon really wanted the future ruler's of the fire nation to be this "strong line", then he was pretty much counting on something happening to iroh or lu ten. and when it did happen, he wouldn't of had a problem with ozai proposing he be firelord, and he wouldn't have wanted to have on of these "strong line" memebers (zuko) killed.

I'm just saying, it is really a stretch for these flashbacks to fit with the original canon.

Menopause hits in the 40's & 50's. It's not a stretch at all, you're just seeing what you want to see. It doesn't make sense for Azulon to sacrifice Zuko, which you answer with "he must have thought it was more important to teach Ozai a lesson," but you don't apply this same risk assessment logic to something that is frankly much more mundane. So what if he "could" marry her off to Lu Ten? That doesn't mean that he had to, or that it was the best choice available. Lu Ten was also a soldier, so he might have wanted a back-up plan. Also, if we're discounting social acceptability, did you consider that maybe the Fire Nation Royals practice incest? The Pharohs & European Kings did.

yeah but, ursa would have only been 29 when lu ten was ready for marriage. that is AT LEAST 10 years to make babies.

it doesn't make sense for azulon to sacrifice zuko IF he is part of this "strong line". which was never indicated when the original series was written. so it is the search that makes it not make sense.

lu ten or iroh would have been better choices because they were actually in line to be firelord. so their descendents would have been these "strong line" people.

and has been shown that couples who are decades apart are socially acceptable in the avatar world (sozin and azulon's mom, tenzin and pema) incest has never been shown to be socially acceptable (and it is stupid for it can produce offspring with defects, not that they would necessarily know that...). but so what if it was? are you saying his plan was to have azula marry lu ten or something?

also large age differences in couples is much more acceptable in our society anyway than incest. so the writers would never write this story with incest.

"yeah but, ursa would have only been 29 when lu ten was ready for marriage. that is AT LEAST 10 years to make babies."

Or you could go with Ozai, & what, double that time?

"it doesn't make sense for azulon to sacrifice zuko IF he is part of this "strong line". which was never indicated when the original series was written. so it is the search that makes it not make sense."

No, it doesn't make sense either way. It contradicts Azulon's supposed empathy for losing a son.

"incest has never been shown to be socially acceptable (and it is stupid for it can produce offspring with defects, not that they would necessarily know that...). but so what if it was? are you saying his plan was to have azula marry lu ten or something?"

You're the only one saying that he had a "plan" that needed to work out perfectly. I'm just telling you how the royal family system works.

"also large age differences in couples is much more acceptable in our society anyway than incest. so the writers would never write this story with incest."

Harry Potter has incest, which Rowling based on the same reasoning that I am using now. It's more likely than you think.

ursa and ozai only have 2 kids anyway. they probably don't want a ton of kids. there must be birth control on avatar, otherwise all the families would be a lot bigger. 10 years is plenty of time to have 2 kids. or 5 if you want to.

or you could say azulon liked iroh much better which is why he had much more empathy for him.

he seemed to have somewhat of a plan. in the original series he wanted iroh to be firelord. and in the search he wanted this "strong line" to rule the fire nation. these plans conflict.

1. harry potter has more mature themes than avatar.
2. now I read the books 6+ years ago but, when was there incest?

1. voldemort wasn't a pureblood. 2. the "incest" was between distant cousins and stuff, not direct family members. 3. It wasn't majorly featured, it was just kinda like a side note that, if these families are purebloods, then they've probably married into each other a few times.

2. I don't recall it ever being said that it only happened after a certain relation, but it is irrelevant in any case, as the relationship would only become more distant as time went on. If the marriage occurred in the modern time, they would already be, what, 2nd or 3rd cousins, depending on whether we're using the Fire Lady or Iroh II?

3. The ages of the characters in Avatar also aren't "majorly featured." The argument was that it couldn't be allowed at all, which is untrue. It was also given as a reason for the unstable behavior of some dark wizards, so it really is parallel in a lot of ways.

It can be done, but it's uncommon, & more to the point, a lack of action does not constitute a plan. If Azulon didn't want Ozai to ever have a shot at the throne, he could have disinherited him entirely, as Ozai proved with Zuko.

maybe he liked ozai but, not as much as iroh. and didn't want him to have the throne. ozai actually had perfectly good reasoning to become the firelord, according to the search azulon should have said "hey, well I guess this strong line is going to rule now, great!" but instead he got angry at ozai.

The natural order of things is for Iroh to take the throne &, assuming that he dies/retires with no heirs, it would go to Ozai, or Ozai's children, if Ozai was too old by that point. And again, if his reasoning was "perfectly good," then this was a hole in the original series.

TheAvatarNate wrote:Why would Azulon want Ursa to marry Ozai? At the time, Iroh was in line to be firelord. Ozai's children were not supposed to ever be rulers of the fire nation, at least not according to Azulon's plan.

I suppose Gene Yang did not make that clear. See, the Fire Sages prophesied to Azulon that the future Fire Lords will come from Roku's line. To ensure the future Fire Lords will come from Azulon's line as well, Azulon arranged to have Ozai to be married to Ursa. Even if Zuko is not Ozai's true son (bear with me) Ozai and Azulon have vested interest to keep Zuko within the royal family so he would not be a threat to Azulon's family and interests. Zuko eventually turned against them anyway but Ozai and Azula would have faced worse ends had Zuko not have any familial attachments with them.

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I think that this wholething brings up how complicated the whole plot of the Search was. You had so many different subplots involved in the story, and kind of a chaotic plot that made the story overall a bit chaotic. It was still a good story and it tied up the lose end of finding Zuko's mom. But it just wasn't my personal favorite.

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About the search there is something which i dont understand. Azulon was 95 when he died.And zuko was 11 when Azulon died. Ozai and Ursa s marriage was possibly around an year before zuko s birth so that means that azulon was 83 when he arranged their marriage. Rina is Roku s daugther so she is at least 12 years older than azulon because roku died 12 years before Azulon s birth so that means that she was 95 when Azulon arranged Ozai and Ursa s marriage. If she was still alive when Ursa was banished she would be 107 and Jinzuk is probably around her age so they were probably dead. When Ursa returned to Hira she thought that her parents were still alive but why ? Someone who is so old is probably dead so why Ursa thought that they were still alive?

I have as yet not read The Search in its entirety, so I cannot be entirely certain, but:

Regarding Ursa, The Search Library Edition tells us she was 38 at the time of The Search, and it also tells us she was 21 when she was married to Azulon. Taking into account Zuko's own age, he would have been born while Ursa was still 21, so a very short period of time following her marriage.

As for Jinzuk and Rina...while rare, there are examples of individuals who lived over to be that old. It is unlikely, but not impossible.

DrachenRitter42 wrote:
I have as yet not read The Search in its entirety, so I cannot be entirely certain, but:

Regarding Ursa, The Search Library Edition tells us she was 38 at the time of The Search, and it also tells us she was 21 when she was married to Azulon. Taking into account Zuko's own age, he would have been born while Ursa was still 21, so a very short period of time following her marriage.

As for Jinzuk and Rina...while rare, there are examples of individuals who lived over to be that old. It is unlikely, but not impossible.

i think she wasnt 38 i think she was 40 in the search because zuko was 18 in the search that will mean that she was 20 when zuko was born but we know that she was 21 when she married so she must be 39-40 in the search not 38

Based on what I know about how real monarch’s function, the marriage does make since. Often the king would have multiple sons, while only the oldest would actually become the King, the other sons would usually be appointed as Dukes, Counts, and Barons, and would stay powerful their entire lives. Their families would often intermarry or marry the royalty of other nations and even if a royal family member would never be a king, the odds that one or more of his descendants down the road would were VERY high. Therefore Azulon’s decision makes sense (assuming Iroh also married someone of high birth). Azulon does not expect Ozai or any of Ozai’s children to be firelord but he does expect that within a few generations, one of Ozai’s descendants will obtain the throne most likely by marrying one of Iroh’s descendants. So Azulon is actually thinking very long term about it.

Who said it was Azulon's idea to marry Ozai and Ursa? What if it was Ozai's idea? Since Iroh was already married and probably wasn't really interested in having more children (being a busy war general and all that), Ozai most likely volunteered to be the one to marry Roku's descendant. It would strengthen the power of the royal family, so there would be nothing to lose and a lot to gain in the marriage.

The Fire sages told Azulon that a marriage between his descendants and Avatar Roku's descendants would result in powerful firebender childs, that would guarantee firelord's lineage. So he went himself to hira'ra to meet Ursa. It is assumed it was his idea, not Ozai's.